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Lords of the Night: Vampires
Series: d20
Publisher: Bottled Imp Games
Type: Sourcebook
Media: Softback
Review: here
Review Intro:
Lords of the Night: Vampires is Bottled Imp Games’ first book. If you don’t believe me, then I don’t blame you; it doesn’t look like a first book. I can’t imagine there’s much room left in the scrum at the bottom of the d20 ladder these days. If Vampires represents Bottled Imp Games’ attempt to launch themselves by aiming somewhere higher, further up that ladder, then they’ve succeeded. They’ve certainly got a finger or two (or should I say fang?) on that higher up rung anyway. The 128-paged book has an enticing front cover with a nice matt black feel to it, good text density, a two column layout that switches to three columns for the spell lists, new ideas and a reassuring feel.
It’s the combination of new ideas and a reassuring feel that makes Lords of the Night: Vampire a comfortable read. That might be the book’s most important success. The roleplaying hobby isn’t short on vampire material but there’s a disjunction between those RPGs which are all about vampires as characters and those games like D&D where the default vampire wouldn’t be amiss in an old four colour comic. Lords of the Night brings the two together, makes a good job of it and gives us the best of both worlds.
The book gets off to a good start by defining a vampire as anyone who drinks blood to survive. That’s a strong enough definition and it doesn’t involve tragically hip angst or crumbling castles. Readers familiar with tragically hip vampires will be familiar with the narrative style, clues to a bigger story, which runs through the book. Gamers more at home under the aegis of the d20 logo won’t find the flavour text overbearing. In fact Lords of the Night: Vampires is just the first in the Darkness Rising series, a series which seems to be something more than just a collection of race books but not quite a campaign setting either. We’ll have to wait and see what comes next and Bottled Imp Games will have to work hard to produce the series as good as the first book promises. .... [ more ]
Bastards & Bloodlines
Series: d20
Publisher: Green Ronin
Type: Supplement
Media: Softback
Review: here
Review Intro:
"Are You Ready To Get Freaky?" asks the back of the entertainingly titled Bastards & Bloodlines. I suppose it’s fair enough, some of the crossbreed races presented by the book are freaky; especially those half-Beholders depicted on page 4. The freak factor isn’t anything to sing about though. I’m much more impressed by the book’s professional shine and player friendly vibe. Bastards & Bloodlines is concerned with those half-breed fantasy races that could be used as a PC or NPC race, it’s more of a handbook than it is a beastiary.
Okay, so it’s a crunchy book. There are lots of game rules for new half-bred races, a new type of magic and plenty of templates. Despite all the numbers and dice in the 112-pages the book is pleasant and easy to read. The introduction contains an intelligent discussion on the merits and flaws of having half-breeds in your campaign world. Most D&D games do run with half-breeds; half-orc and half-elf so why not half-goblinoids (halfling-goblin, for example) or half-ogre? There’s plenty of inspirational flavour in the Specific Half-Breed chapter too. Each half-bred race introduced by the book has an introduction which explains why or how the half-bred race came into being (divine magic, polymorph spell, sexual compatibility, etc), a nicely written description (which accompanies excellent artwork for each), plenty of information on the racial demeanor, typical backgrounds for members of the race and their role as adventurers. The stats include favoured class (often the first thing forgotten by third party publishers) and level adjustment notes for powerful half-breeds.
Bastards & Bloodlines is one of those books that invites you to flick through it, ogle at the artwork and then get sucked into the text. The illustrations are great; people will call the Lurker (half gnome, half cloaker) and mind ripper (half humanoid, half mind flayer) as freaky but I think they’re the good sort of freaky. No one will call the houri (half elf, half nymph), piper (half halfling, half satyr), or trixie (half gnome, half pixie) freaky though. If anything, there’s more eye candy than nightmare in the book. James Ryman and Julian Allen are artists I’ll remember. I already look out for the name Macbin on books
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Dangerous Dungeons: Goblins' Lairs
Series: d20
Publisher: 0one Roleplaying Games
Type: Cartography
Media: PDF
Review: here
Review Intro:
Wow. How cool is this? Dangerous Dungeons: Goblins' Lairs is a 66-paged PDF (great value at the current price of $6) and the jaw-dropping part of the download is the first 54 pages. The remaining section of the product is a collection of page after page of goblin stat blocks. They’re all sorts of goblins here, scouts, warriors, shaman and even goblin vampires. The Challenge Ratings start at ¼ and finish at 18. There are several of these high level goblins too. There’s a goblin for every occasion.
But I’m not drooling over the goblin stat blocks.
The electronic cartography market must be one of the most competitive sub-sections in the RPG industry. The quality is awesome. Awesome is the right word. The maps in Goblins’ Lairs – and that’s what you’re buying – are awesome. The success of this product isn’t entirely tied up with the usual 0one Roleplaying Games artistic talent but also with the sheer thoroughness of each set of maps; there’s one for every taste. ...
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Factory
Series: d20
Publisher: Perpetrated Press
Type: High Fantasy / Science Fantasy
Media: Paperback
Review: here
Review Intro:
Perpetrated Press have done it again with Factory. Their first technomagic book, Arsenal, was really quite good. The smart move was to ensure that there was enough of a twist and enough tempting flavour to support the crunchy bits so that people like me (prone to falling asleep if he sees too many numbers in a supplement) found it interesting. Those games buying Arsenal for the, er, arsenal, weren’t disappointed either. Factory pulls off the same trick and keeps our attention by adding a little more.
Factory is designed to let you use high technology (computers, robots, cyberware) along with high magic (elementals, demons, golems) as easily and as excitingly as possible. The first stage is to equate the two. Technology is magic. As author Erik Kjerland succinctly surmises, "Toasters are powered by tiny fire mephits." There isn’t actually any cyberware; the magical equivalent is dweoware. If you thought implanting an electronic device in your arm was risky then what about implanting a fire mephit powered device in your head? I was pleased to discover that Perpetrated Press had thought of that too. Factory contains rules for surgery failures.
I’m going to point out the new spells early in the review too. The spells aren’t a major feature of the book but I laughed in delight when I discovered the Blue Screen of Death spell. As computer admins around the world will tell you; there really is a such an effect.
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NeoTerra
Series: EABA
Publisher: BTRC
Type: Sci-Fi / Future Nior
Media: PDF
Review: here
Review Intro:
NeoTerra is a thinker. It’s a campaign setting running off a smart idea. Treat this review in the same way you might a review of a pre-written adventure – it’ll contain spoilers. I think that’s fair enough, if you’re interested in buying NeoTerra then I suspect you’ll read through all of it and to the GM only section. Here’s an advantage of a PDF game that I hadn’t thought of before. You can print out your copy, move the GM only bit to a second folder and let your players safely flick through the first.
The GM section in the game is ultraviolet clearance, citizen. The computer is here to help.
Oh wait. No. That’s Paranoia. If you take Paranoia and remove the mutants, the obsessive laws and cure the insane computer then you’re moving towards NeoTerra’s own brand of dark future.
There is an ever-present computer and it cares for humanity but it’s not mad, a little eccentric perhaps, but it does a good job of looking after mankind. You can expect to live for 200 years with the computer’s help, you can expect to live for exactly 200 years and to be completely active and healthy for all that time. The computer gives you a house, free clothes, free food and an allowance. If you fall down the stairs, get hit by a truck or beaten up by a mugger then the computer’s robots will rush to your aid and heal you. The computer can cure anything short of total destruction of the body. Healing technology is so good that people refer to "death" as something which can be cured and "permanent death" – which can’t. This ever-present computer is simply known as the Net.
The Net imposes no draconian laws. In fact, the Net doesn’t impose any laws at all. It’s not illegal to deal drugs, to be a member of a secret society or even to blow away your nosey neighbour. There’s a catch though. The Net controlled serves won’t make you a gun. You’ll need to earn some credits and buy one yourself. If you then go shoot your neighbour then in the first instance you’ll have to do a jolly good job of it to stop the Net’s health care system from putting him back together and in the second instance there’s nothing to stop your entire neighbourhood from deciding that they’d be better off without you. There are no laws but there is peer pressure.
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